Morning Fern

by Andrew Court
(Johannesburg South Africa)

I love it when the sun back lights subjects, especially plants and flowers.

I took this shot of a back lit fern when the morning dew was at its best and the original colour shot was really pretty showing vivid contrasting colour- but when I converted it to black and white I prefferred the contrasts and the overall look.

I took the pic into photoshop and used the channel mixer and converted to monochrome. However plain desaturation was quite flat so I used the preset green filter which gave me more appealing blacks and whites.

I then fiddled with the contrast until I got what I thought was good. I added some more lens flare to some of the droplets. I have also sent the original colour shot.

Hope you like and look forward to the critique.

Andrew.

Personally, I love the photo! I think converting it to black and white was a really good move.

Images that contain regular shapes (such as these ferns) look really good in black and white.

The thing I think I like the most is the shooting angle - great idea to get under the leaf as the sun causes tiny starbursts where the water droplets are.

And of course the composition - spot on! Cropping the scene to really concentrate on just one frond set against a clean background is excellent.

Often photographers are tempted to get too much into a scene - less really is so often more!